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# Advances / Credit

How to record customer advance payments and allocate the resulting credit to open invoices on the Advances / Credit screen.

# Advances / Credit

Use this screen to record a customer prepayment that isn't tied to an invoice yet, and to apply that credit to invoices as they come due.

## What you can do here

- **See all advances on file.** The table lists every payment recorded as a customer advance, with the customer name, payment method, amount, date, any linked invoice, reference number, who received it, and status.
- **Record a new advance.** Click **Record advance** to open a form. You pick the customer (search by name, company, or email), enter the amount, choose a payment method (Cash, Check, or Bank transfer / manual), set the payment date, and optionally add a reference number and notes. Amount must be greater than zero and a customer must be selected before you can save.
- **Allocate credit to an invoice.** Click **Allocate** on any advance row to open the allocation panel. It shows the payment amount, how much has already been allocated, and how much credit is left. If the customer has open invoices, you pick one and an amount (defaulted to whichever is smaller: the remaining credit or the invoice's balance due) and apply it. If there are no open invoices for that customer, the panel tells you the amount stays as customer credit until one exists.
- **Track partial allocations.** A single advance can be split across multiple invoices over time. Each allocation made so far is listed in the panel with the invoice number and amount applied.

## Steps

### Record an advance
1. Click **Record advance**.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. Enter the amount and pick a payment method.
4. Confirm or change the date, and add a reference number or notes if useful.
5. Click **Record advance** to save. It appears in the list with status Advance.

### Allocate credit to an invoice
1. Find the advance in the list and click **Allocate**.
2. Review the payment amount, allocated amount, and credit left.
3. Select the open invoice you want to apply the credit to.
4. Adjust the amount if you don't want to apply the full suggested amount.
5. Click **Allocate**. The invoice balance and the advance's remaining credit both update.

## Related

- /help/billing/invoices
- /help/billing/payments
- /help/billing/customers

<!-- REVIEW NOTES (drafting agent could not verify):
  1. The exact behaviour when an advance's currency differs from the business default currency was not traced end to end; the form uses the business's default currency and does not expose a currency picker.
  2. Whether a refund action for an unallocated advance is exposed directly on this screen (a refund code path exists in the backend) was not confirmed from this screen's UI; not described in the article.
  3. Row-level actions beyond "Allocate" (such as edit or delete on an advance row) were not found in the code and are assumed not present on this screen.
-->